


Some Remarks on a Polyp Autopsy

by R Donald James (Callmesalticidae)



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: Gen, flying polyps, mi-go - Freeform, scientific experiments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 00:16:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3188606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callmesalticidae/pseuds/R%20Donald%20James
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The most difficult part was procuring the body, as it always was. Polyps die only infrequently, and only more rarely do they stay dead for very long."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Remarks on a Polyp Autopsy

**Author's Note:**

> Speedwritten in 41 minutes in response to this prompt: UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF OPIUM A YOUNG RESEARCHER CONDUCTS EXPERIMENTS ON A FLYING POLYP THAT WAS DISCOVERED IN SOME BACKWATER SWAMP VILLAGES. HE IS LED TO UNDERTAKE FURTHER AETHERICAL EXPERIMENTS AND FINDS HIMSELF MIND-SWAPPING WITH HIDEOUS CREATURES IN THE COMPANY OF A YOUNG GEOLOGIST.

Yes, I once had the opportunity to study a specimen of xenozoa yakshii, commonly known as the flying polyp. The examination was a peculiar thing and one that I would not recommend. Indeed, especially not to you, and I shall only relate the details in a broad stroke. If you insist on going further then that is your lookout. What you need is available in any ancient paper on the subject.  
  
The most difficult part was procuring the body, as it always was. Polyps die only infrequently, and only more rarely do they stay dead for very long. Laying it to rest on an electrified platform was our best way of dealing with that in those days, back when some of us sought to make examinations of the polyps, and as the beds work unpredictably in tandem with a polyp's presence even today, well... After some extraordinarily destructive accidents, people began losing interest in funding the research. Not to mention that we learned precious little from them. Like asking a black hole its opinion on Karl Marx and recording the response in musical notation.  
  
Well it makes a lot of sense to us, kid.  
  
No, I wouldn't say that it was common at all even in the heyday. Difficult? Not after you got a body, I don't think. But very strange, and few were willing to take the trouble.  
  
I took opium before proceeding. The mind in its balanced state cannot properly interact with a polyp. There's no hogwash about losing your mind without it, you simply cannot go further. Polyps are not wholly physical things like you and I. Partly other, partly Dreamlandish, we must similarly delve partway into another realm in order to be like them. Do you see? Drugs are the bridge, and of those of us who experimented on polyps in the old days there were many opinions. Which drug was best, which cocktail, which strain of cannabis?  
  
I had been present at the experimentation on a polyp once before, you know, under the effects of LSD. It was... an extraordinary experience, let me tell you. Certainly more tolerable. That was when we learned how subjective these things were. I and my professor and the other aide had reported differing experiences, you see, and after all was said and done the experiment reported a mixture of the three. It was a little like a quantum collapse, if I'm correctly remembering the terminology of my physics days.  
  
It did make for a good paper, though, in the journals that cared. We were the first to really measure it out, you see, and notice how our experiences diverged from each other. We stopped using assistants after that.  
  
Mathematics was important. You have to know the equations to scrawl on the room to pin it down. Between our world and the Dreamlands is a chasm of dimensions. You must pin your polyp if you want to keep it in one shape and one, ah, one quantum state, we should say. That was another team that learned that, and another paper.  
  
I still remember the equations. Arabic numerals are the best to use, of course.  
  
The tools, likewise, must be electrified. Else they will not penetrate the polyp's skin, but merely pass through the way, doing nothing at all.  
  
And I find that I digress. The opium was a variety grown here, but in Dreamlandish soil. Perhaps that was the reason for the oddity that I experienced.  
  
The polyp had been found in a peat bog, in the wake of one of some little storm such as the polyps like to make and play in. I don't know which country, that never bothered me. I wasn't responsible for procuring resources, only agreeing to receive and pay for them. Regardless, it was transported on an electrified bed, as standard, and brought to me in the fourteen business days I'd been promised. All good.  
  
It was a standard-sized specimen, three inches longer than average, average thickness, average width. It faded in and out like a mirage, spots here and there, but that stopped as soon as I began the opum. There was a whistling sound, sort of like "Where the Watermelons Grow," and it grew louder as I applied my tools.  
  
I should have used a gas mask. Some did, when their drug was inhaled, but I didn't like such things. They were constrictive. But as I began my dissection of the polyp's aether sac the gasses therein must have mixed with the opium fumes. At first I was merely lightheaded, then subject hallucinations of the the most peculiar noises, but finally I had... an out of body experience, as it were. As did another being.  
  
One of the mi-go. They must have been at a mining reservation, because there was a young woman present with them. Possibly one of those co-op groups, you know, the combined corporations. They were discussing the lay of the land, the soil content, things like that, and the kind of processes that would be best under the present circumstances. I could only get a little bit as they kept switching back and forth between buzzing and Spanish- the woman did a passable job speaking their language, I have to say.  
  
Anyway, as soon as someone asked me a question it was obvious that something had gone terribly wrong. They were understanding, of course, no ill will having been meant, but... Well, I've always been very curious about the circumstances behind it all and how it happened. The mi-go have some holdings in the Dreamlands, too, I should mention. Our Dreamlands, that is. They have their own. And I do wonder if there's a connection there.  
  
But more importantly, I don't think they knew about our operations on the polyps at that time. You know how... very focused they can be. They can hardly tell the Chinese government from the Brazilian, and they simply make their treaties with whatever population center is closest to the land they're interested in. But I don't think that they liked it. The room was trashed and the polyp desecrated and unusable when I got back, and perhaps I'm paranoid but it seemed like we had more accidents ever since that time.  
  
I'm glad we look all alike to them, I'll tell you. Sometimes I wonder what may have happened to me if the mi-go could recognize me.


End file.
